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LinkedIn Buys Rapportive
redletterdave writes "Business networking site LinkedIn acquired Rapportive on Wednesday, which is a Gmail add-on that provides information about your social contacts as you e-mail them. The deal was reportedly already in place by Dec. 8, but Rapportive confirmed the acquisition on Wednesday in its company blog. Rapportive, which is still available over Gmail, adds an e-mailer's social networking accounts, including their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and overlays the information over open messages and e-mail drafts. Neither Rapportive nor LinkedIn would release the financial details of the acquisition, but sources close to the situation say the deal closed in the 'low teens' of millions of dollars."
I'm on it, but it already struck me as a social network, with a thin layer of "business-ness" on the top of it. The submissions on people aren't authenticated in anyway, there's an awful lot of clutter and constant nagging to get you to upgrade (and pay some, or more $$$). So now with Rapportive (a bit more of the Social network) is it finally out of the closet? And oh yeah, first post...
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I have a profile on LinkedIn which has done me zero good so far, but one thing about the site has always bothered me.
Is it truly ethical to gain an upper hand with regards to employment prospects because of who you know instead of your individual performance or merits?
To me the site just seems like a blatant promoter of cronyism, promoting the hiring of friends or aquaintences over those who may be more qualified.
In Soviet Russia meme tires of you!
Inflate the share price, and buy out companies by swapping shares. No cash needed.
With a PE ratio of 1000+ LNKD does not worth the current valuation.
Coupled with my experience that only 1 out of 10 of my friends have account there, on average.
New Economic Perspectives
- always been true. At least LinkedIn is an easy way for a geek to 'network'.
or is it opt in?
Just this Monday I had convinced Linkedin to remove all of my contacts I'd given them once a few years ago. Now they can harvest them (again?) with rapportive? I give up, where can I buy a fashionable tin foil hat? I don't mind if my resume is on the Internet, but I do mind if the prime resume pimping company is messing about in my private e-mail. I guess the only way to keep your e-mail account private these days is hosting your own mail server....
By the way, if you want Linkedin to wipe your g-mail contacts that haven't linked with you, send them a request through their help desk. It may take some persuasion, but they will do it.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
By the way, if you want Linkedin to wipe your g-mail contacts that haven't linked with you, send them a request through their help desk. It may take some persuasion, but they will do it.
If you don't want to share information like that with the world, do not upload it to sites like this or (worse) give them your email login so that they can hoover up all your contacts. Why you would trust a site like this with contact info mystifies me, but once it is done, you can never really undo it - they've already plotted your social graph from those mails, and that information in itself is very useful.
So the solution to your problem is *never* to share your contacts list with a social website.
I looked at LinkedIn, to see if it would be worth using for finding jobs - concluded that, no, it wasn't really.
I'm in IT; I'm a Project Manager with a fairly wide experience-set, and specific training and skills. Most things it would propose are far outside of my skillset or level, e.g. mandatory languages that I do not speak, or experience in fields that I have not worked. Searching gave me nothing that was better.
Looking to links from me to the suggested companies were useless, as it would show links via people that live in other countries and have never met me nor the recruiter.
Meanwhile, I can still network, I can still look at job-postings on real job-boards, and I can still write actual letters (instead of clicking on "apply" button on LinkedIn).
Jobs are found by who you know - not which 200 links on linkedin you might have.
It was a bargain at $15.999.999.
Jobs are found by who you know - not which 200 links on linkedin you might have.
Which is how LinkedIn works for me. Everybody in my office is on LinkedIn, but it is not used much. Its main function is a contact point for ex-colleagues after you go your separate ways. I don't keep in email contact with them all, but I know that if I want to contact someone I have worked with in the past, I can do so via LinkedIn. Possibly not directly, but via another ex-colleague. The links will lie latent for years, and most will never be used. But the few that are will be very valuable.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
This is the second acquisition lately by Linkedin of a small app that I've come to regard as invaluable. The first was business-card-scanner Cardmunch; now Rapportive.
Rapportive is awesome. Whenever I get an email from somebody, or start writing an email TO somebody, Rapportive's sidebar shows me that person's photo, tells me where he works, what her title is, what his phone number is, what her most recent Twitter posts are. It's like having a secretary permanently at my elbow filling in the gaps when my brain goes "who the f*ck is this person and why do I care again?"
Your friends must have no careers? It's hard to do networking and getting jobs without being on linkedin these days.
Nice to see that linedin has paid shills too!
In the UK, linkedin is used almost exclusively by sales people to annoy potential customers, sorry, follow up on that interesting conversation we had about stationery ordering.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Rapportive was the first product that really shocked me into being privacy conscious. It allowed people to data mine my email and find many of my online accounts, even ones which I've always selected privacy options to not link my email to the account. Seeing as Linkedin members are a product for company looking for employees, I won't be surprised if Linkedin start selling rather invasive background checks on it members to perspective employers. Will have to considering deleting my account.
Well, LinkedIn works for me. I'm a freelance developer (C++, Perl, Oracle, Linux,..). I'm in the UK, and most UK agents in this field have at least one person in their office that is on LinkedIn - I'm sure they pay extra for access outside their immediate network.
I got my current gig via LinkedIn, and it's working from home (UK) for a company in the far east. And every month I get at least one invitation to connect from an agent that is more or less a job description, because they're actively searching for people and found me via LinkedIn, but this is the only way to approach people you don't know.
I'm not on any of the job sites/cv databases (my choice), when I need a job, I browse openings and contact directly. Possibly, if I was, I'd get much more spam that I currently do.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!